Established in 2006, the Keystone State Education Coalition is a growing grass roots, non-partisan public education advocacy group of several hundred locally elected, volunteer school board members and administrators from school districts throughout Pennsylvania. Our mission is to evaluate, discuss and inform our boards, district constituents and legislators on legislative issues of common interest and to facilitate active engagement in public education advocacy.

If you want legislators who support public education then please support
these candidates with your time, your money and your votes.

Education Voters Action of PA 2012 General Election Endorsements

Education Voters Action
of Pennsylvania
Published on September 17, 2012

We are very pleased to announce our first of two rounds of endorsements for
the 2012 General Election. Based on a review of available information,
including written materials, public statements, voting records and candidate
interviews, Education Voters has decided to endorse the following candidates
with a goal of having more legislators who support public education in public
office.

These candidates recognize that if our economy
and our communities are going to improve and remain strong that it starts with
our students. We need strong
policymakers in Harrisburg
that are willing to stand up for our values, so we ask that you support public
education by supporting these candidates on November 6th!

Western Pa. school districts hit Web to lure
students, save money

TribLive byRossilynne SkenaMonday, October 29, 2012,
12:01 a.m.
In addition to their daily work teaching in front of rooms full of students, NorwinSchool
District teachers Peggy Bryan and Brian
Fleckenstein have adopted online classrooms.

They’re two of many
local educators who are teaching virtual classes as school districts grapple
with a costly exodus of students to cyber schools. The districts are pitching
in-house online courses in an effort to lure students back, retain the ones
they have and save money.

Every school district in
WestmorelandCounty offers some e-learning component,
and that commitment is “pretty unique,” said Tim Hammill, supervisor of
educational technology integration services at the Westmoreland Intermediate
Unit. Almost every district has established programs through the intermediate
unit, a countywide education consortium.

If we work only on teacher practice, and not
children’s full lives, then we – at best – only improve a small percentage of a
child’s day.

If we blame educators, then we demoralize the
very people we claim to want to help.

If we blame educators, we drive people away from
the critical profession.”

Education
Has It’s Own “47%” Scapegoat

Christopher
Lehmen’s Blog October
29, 2012

Education
has been having it’s own dramatic “47%”ing for sometime now. You see, as
the story goes, the reason why education is “failing” is because educators just
“don’t care enough.” A small percentage of amazing teachers believe in kids,
the tale continues, but most, especially those who work in high poverty
schools, do not believe in the children they serve, their expectations are too
low, and they in fact do not know how to teach.

“If
you don’t count the chamber of commerce and the three rich guys (Marcus, Gaby
and Cousins), Georgians contributed $30,615 to the cause. That’s 1.4 percent —
by any measure, hardly a groundswell of in-state support for the charter
amendment.”

Carpetbaggers dump $1M more into Georgia charter-school campaign

Atlanta Unfiltered By JIM WALLS Oct. 26, 2012

Just this month,
Walmart heiress Alice Walton and other out-of-state interests dumped more than
$1.1 million into the campaign to allow more state-chartered public schools in Georgia,
new campaign finance filings show.

Families for Better
Public Schools, the largest of the pro-charter committees, filed papers at noon today showing it had sunk another
$1.28 million in October into the campaign for the proposed amendment to Georgia’s
constitution. Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to accept or reject Amendment
One, which would allow the state to charter schools over the objections of
local school systems.

Walton, the
committee’s largest single donor, kicked in $350,000 on top of the $250,000
she’d given previously. Other big donors
disclosed in the committee’s latest filing were:

In case you
have been offline due to the storm, here’s KEYSEC coverage of carpetbaggers who
dumped $400K more into Pennsylvania
legislative races in the past month.
Noteworthy were $100K to EITC sponsor State Rep. Christiana (R-15
Beaver), $50K to voucher proponent Senator Anthony Williams (D-8 Philadelphia. Delaware) and $50K to
Brian Munroe, who is challenging State Rep. Bernie O’Neill (R-29 Bucks), a
strong supporter of public education.

PA Students First PAC Campaign Finance Report From 9/18/12 through 10/22/12

Education Week Living in Dialogue Blog By Anthony Cody on October
30, 2012 7:30 AM

A remarkable coalition of individuals and
organizations, many of them with deep roots in the African American and Latino
communities, is calling upon the Department of Education to abandon plans to
implement new policies associated with NCLB waivers in the state of New Jersey.

In the past, some leaders in the African
American and Latino communities have supported NCLB, believing it would result
in improved outcomes for students. The Department of Education has relied on
this support to press its case that closing schools on the basis of test scores
is in the interest of students. This letter reveals a different stance on the
part of these leaders.

Rosie Grant, Program Director at the Paterson
Education Fund, explained their stance in a press release issued two weeks
ago:

“We understand that the
waivers were an effort to free states
from the impossible targets set by NCLB. Unfortunately, here in New Jersey, it is clear
that the NCLB waiver is being used by the NJDOE to apply measures that are much
more damaging than NCLB would have been, particularly for low-income Black and
Latino children.”

Dozens of civil rights and community
organizations joined Ms. Grant in signing a letter that explained their
concerns. Here is the letter, complete with the latest list of signatures.

Caution Urged in Using 'Value Added' Evaluations

Top researchers studying new “value added” or
“growth index” models for measuring a teacher’s contribution to student
achievement completely agree on one thing: These methods should be used in
staff-evaluation systems with more caution than they have been so far.

That area of agreement emerged in an Aug. 9
meeting that drew together a who’s who of a dozen of the nation’s top education
researchers on value-added methods—in areas from education to economics—to
build, if not consensus, at least familiarity within a disparate research
community for value-added systems. The U.S. Department of Education’s research
agency, which organized the forum, today released the proceedings of the
meeting, as well as individual briefs from each of the experts.

EVALUATING WHAT WORKS
IN BLENDED LEARNING

Education Week October 30, 2012

Blended learning—the mix of virtual education
and face-to-face instruction—is evolving quickly in schools across the country,
generating a variety of different models. This special report, the second in an
ongoingseries on virtual
education, examines several of those approaches and aims to
identify what is working and where improvements are needed.

Which state has the best
public schools?

Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney has boasted repeatedly that the public
schools of Massachusetts,
the state where he was once governor, are “ranked number one of all 50 states.”
Yet an annual state rankingby Education Weekhas given the top spot to Maryland for four
straight years. So which state has the best schools? Matthew Di Carlo, senior
fellow at the non-profit Albert Shanker Institute in Washington, D.C.,
takes a look at this question. A version of thispostoriginally appeared on the institute’sblog.

NationalEducationPolicyCenter

Charter Sponsor is Very
Successful

Vavan Gureghian runs a successful charter school called the ChesterCommunityCharterSchool. The school is
nonprofit, but Mr. Gureghian supplies its good and services through his
for-profit company and collects millions of dollars as a management fee.
Meanwhile the local Chester Upland public
schools–whose funds pay for the
students in the charter school–is in bankruptcy and under the control of a
Governor-appointed “chief recovery officer.” Poor Chester Upland has been
controlled by the state for most of the past decade, yet gets blamed for
the fiscal insolvency that the state has deepened and may now use as an excuse
to eliminate its public schools.

If you want legislators who support public education then please support
these candidates with your time, your money and your votes.

Education Voters Action of PA 2012 General Election Endorsements

Education Voters Action
of Pennsylvania
Published on September 17, 2012

We are very pleased to announce our first of two rounds of endorsements for
the 2012 General Election. Based on a review of available information,
including written materials, public statements, voting records and candidate
interviews, Education Voters has decided to endorse the following candidates
with a goal of having more legislators who support public education in public
office.

These candidates recognize that if our economy
and our communities are going to improve and remain strong that it starts with
our students. We need strong
policymakers in Harrisburg
that are willing to stand up for our values, so we ask that you support public
education by supporting these candidates on November 6th!

“Missing entirely from this quantification is a
sense of what really matters in education: real student learning (not just
learning how to take standardized tests). Well rounded knowledge outside basic
reading and math skills. (Where is art, music, science, history?) Character
development. Citizenship. The building score misses the point of education. Yet
the state intends to make these scores public and then evaluate teachers on
them.

Which begs the question, why does the Department
of Education plan to exempt charter schools from this teacher evaluation plan? Charters
are quite fond of claiming they are public schools, so why shouldn’t building
scores apply to them?”

Evaluating What?

Yinzercation Blog — OCTOBER 29, 2012

If only they spent
this much time worrying about adequately funding our schools. The state Department
of Education just released a complicated new formula for evaluating teachers
that will take effect next fall. One of the new components is a “building
score” that will account for 15% of each teacher’s evaluation. That score
includes a variety of measures, including students’ PSSA scores, graduation
rates, attendance, and whether or not the school offers Advanced Placement
courses. Half of every teacher’s score will be based on direct observation, 20%
will come from locally developed factors (approved by the state), and 15% from
“correlation data based on teacher level measures.” [Post-Gazette,
10-29-12] Whatever that means.

L.A.
Unified School District's Academic Growth Over Time measurement system, based
on students' progress on standardized tests, spurs debate over fairness,
accuracy.

By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times October 28, 2012, 6:28
p.m.

How to measure the worth of Los Angeles math teacher Kyle Hunsberger?

The teacher at Johnnie Cochran Jr. Middle School
works 60-hour weeks, constantly searches for new teaching ideas and makes every
minute count in class. During a fast-paced review of square roots and perfect
numbers, he punctuated explanations with jokes, questioned his students to
check their understanding and engaged them in group work.

His principal, Scott Schmerelson, praises him as
a leader who heads the math department and started a campus program to give
struggling students extra help.

Some of his students say he's the best math
teacher they've ever had — a caring, funny mentor who explains well, pushes on
homework and most of all believes in them.

"He always tells us nothing will stop us
from learning and nothing will stop him from teaching us," said Edwin
Perez, a gregarious 12-year-old, as three of his classmates nodded.

High schools with core courses produce more successful students

Post-Gazette By Kathryn Juric October 30, 201212:09 am

Kathryn Juric is vice president
of The College Board's SAT Program (www.collegeboard.org).When it comes to education policy in the United States today, one thing is
becoming increasingly clear: The structure of course work matters.

As states move to
implement the Common Core State Standards, the positive impact that core course
work and advanced study can have on college readiness is already evident in the
SAT performance of recent high school graduates throughout Pennsylvania and the nation.

According to The College
Board's 2012 SAT Report on College and Career Readiness, which was released
this month, students who completed a core curriculum in high school did
significantly better on the SAT than those who did not. A core curriculum is
defined as four or more years of English and at least three or more years of math,
science and social science or history.

Virtual Ed. Advocates See Potential in Common
Core

Perhaps no segment of educators is more
enthusiastic about the transition to the Common Core State Standards than those
who work in virtual schools or in blended learning environments that mix
face-to-face and online instruction.

With the standards’ emphasis on deeper learning,
collaboration, and applied knowledge, some proponents of online education
suggest their adoption could lead to the passage of policies that are more
friendly to effective online learning. Meanwhile, many online programs are
already practicing the other changes inherent in common-standards adoption,
such as the use of computer-based online assessments.

The Writing Revolution

The
Atlantic October
29, 2012

For
years, nothing seemed capableof
turning around NewDorpHigh
School’s dismal performance—not firing bad
teachers, not flashy education technology, not after-school programs. So, faced
with closure, the school’s principal went all-in on a very specific curriculum
reform, placing an overwhelming focus on teaching the basics of analytic
writing, every day, in virtually every class. What followed was an
extraordinary blossoming of student potential, across nearly every subject—one
that has made New Dorp a model for educational reform.

ChesterUpland
Charter Sponsor Is Very Successful

Diane Ravitch’s Blog October 29, 2012//

Vahan
Gureghian runs a successful charter school called the ChesterCommunityCharterSchool.
The school is nonprofit, but Mr. Gureghian supplies its good and services
through his for-profit company and collects millions of dollars as a management
fee. Meanwhile the local Chester Upland public schools–whose funds pay for the
students in the charter school–is in bankruptcy and under the control of a
Governor-appointed “chief recovery officer.” Poor Chester Upland has been
controlled by the state for most of the past decade, yet gets blamed for
the fiscal insolvency that the state has deepened and may now use as an excuse
to eliminate its public schools.

Share it

About Me

Mark Twain: "God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board."
--------------------------------
School Director, School District of Haverford Township, since 1999;
Chairman, Delaware County School Boards Legislative Council;
Founder and Co-Chair, Southeastern Pennsylvania School Districts’ Education Coalition/Keystone State Education Coalition, Board of Directors, PA School Boards Assocation
-------------------------------------------
If you have any feedback or links to articles that might be a good fit on this blog please email me at lawrenceafeinberg@gmail.com
Thanks!